From Gal Luft's Middle East Strategy at Harvard blog post: "How the Saudis Radicalize US Troops":While Muslim soldiers have served in uniforms loyally for decades, it is the rising number of Wahhabi-trained and converted Muslims that is a relatively recent phenomenon. Since Wahhabism is one of the most radical and puritan strands of Islam, the penetration of Wahhabi thinking into the ranks of the military must be treated with care.
The genesis of radical Islamic thinking within the military was in the 1990-91 Gulf War, when nearly half a million soldiers and marines were deployed in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait and defend the oil kingdom from Saddam Hussein’s aggression. While the Saudis were adamantly opposed to any expression of religious practice by their guests, including a ban on Christmas carols, bible classes and Christian and Jewish prayers, they embarked on a well-orchestrated and generously funded effort sponsored by the Saudi government to convert as many American military members as possible to Islam.
According to General Norman Schwarzkopf’s aide Rick Francona,
Saudi officers appeared to have been directed by their senior military or religious leadership to spot and assess potential converts to Islam among American military members. Once a particular American was ‘targeted,’ […] a few Saudi military officers, including a military imam, would attempt to meet the American in either a purely social setting or at least outside of the work area. These approaches usually included fairly generous gifts and of course, literature about Islam. The gifts included expensive briefcases, pens, books and other personal items. Americans who decided to convert to Islam were rewarded handsomely […] including all expenses paid trips to Mecca, and payments as high as $30,000.
The commander of Saudi forces in the Gulf, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bragged in his memoir that more than 2,000 American troops converted to Islam through this campaign. “These Muslim troops are now the messengers of Islam in the U.S. forces,” said Dr. Abu Ameena Bilal Phillips, a Jamaican-born convert to Islam (1972) who worked during the Gulf war under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force while converting U.S. troops to Islam in his spare time. After the war, Phillips moved to the United States to “set up Islamic chapters in the U.S. Defense Department.”
Nearly two decades have passed since the Saudi conversion campaign, and most of the converts may no longer be in uniforms. But the seeds sown during the Gulf War have germinated, creating scores of radicalized Americans who are a threat to their comrades in uniforms as well as to their civilian communities.
Fort Hood’s Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar“—Arabic for “God is Great”—just before the shooting. As Camp Pennsylvania’s killer Akbar was being led away after the incident, fellow soldiers heard him shout: “You guys are coming into our countries and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.” Allahu Akbar, “you guys,” “our countries”—strong words which tell us that it is time to investigate what exactly happened back then in the desert and assess how serious and deep-rooted the damage is.
Jacob Heilbrunn,
writing in The National Interest, has also raised the question of a Fifth Column:
Make no mistake: hovering over Sen. Lieberman’s inquiry will be the question of whether the army contains a fifth column of Muslim-Americans intent on waging a war against the war on terror on the American homeland. Done properly, it could provide a salutary look into what may well be a nonissue. But done in an inflammatory fashion, it could end up making the Army-McCarthy hearings look like a dainty tea party. Carried far enough, the ultimate target of suspicion for some could be none other than President Barack Hussein Obama, whose patriotism has already been impugned by his detractors.
World Net Daily has likewise raised the question of a Fifth Column, linked the release of a new book on the subject:
According to an explosive new book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," Hasan is just the tip of a jihadist Fifth Column operating within the ranks of the U.S. military – which is too blinded by political correctness to see the threat.
Quoting from a classified military briefing, "Muslim Mafia" reveals that this Fifth Column has penetrated "every branch of the U.S. military." The Islamist enemy has even infiltrated the al-Qaida detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Security officials at Gitmo have been investigating a possible new spy ring involving several "dirty" Arabic linguists who are accused among other things of:
* omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations;
* slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Quran;
* coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators; and
* meeting with suspects on the terrorist watchlist while traveling back in the United States.
More than 75 former Gitmo detainees have returned to the battlefield or anti-American jihad. Some met with the suspect Muslim translators. Others were privately counseled by chaplains also under investigation for security breaches.
Gitmo security officials recently met with FBI agents in Philadelphia to aid their investigation into one of the Muslim linguists under contract at Gitmo, according to sources quoted in the book who are familiar with the investigation.
They also this summer briefed members of Congress about the prison camp's internal security breaches, according to "Muslim Mafia," which is co-authored by former federal agent P. David Gaubatz and investigative journalist Paul Sperry, author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington," which is being used by law enforcement and the military.
"Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian contractor and military linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo," states a copy of the classified Gitmo briefing, which was prepared in May 2009 for the FBI and CIA, as well as the congressional intelligence committees.
The report explains that "dirty" Arabic linguists have gathered classified data involving detainees, interrogations and security operations in an effort to "disrupt" Gitmo operations and U.S. "intelligence-collection capabilities."
It goes on to specifically finger the Muslim Brotherhood, which it calls a terrorist group, in the conspiracy. The Muslim Brotherhood and its U.S. operations and front groups are the subject of "Muslim Mafia."
"These actions are deliberate, carefully planned, global, and to the benefit of the detainees and multiple terrorist organizations, to include al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood," the briefing states, according to the bestselling book.
The enemy infiltration is not limited to Guantanamo.
The report strongly suggests that Islamist spies have penetrated nearly every sensitive U.S. security agency involved in the war on terror, potentially compromising intelligence government-wide.
"Persons participating in this activity move regularly between multiple contracting companies, various intelligence agencies in the U.S. government [FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, etc.], and every branch of the U.S. military."
The investigation comes on the heels of a major Muslim espionage ring that the FBI broke up at Gitmo in 2004.
The American Thinker's Selwyn Duke similarly discusses the possibility of a Fifth Column.Given this, was it really shocking when Hasan walked among the "aggressors" and yelled Allahu Akbar before punctuating his story with a burst of violence?
It wasn't to me. You see, I knew the rough details of the event as soon as I heard about the shooting. I knew that there are jihadists among us; I knew the perpetrator was likely one of them; and I knew that a three-little-monkeys society, blinded, deafened, and dumbed down by political correctness, is allowing this fifth column to operate unfettered. I knew it not because I'm a genius but because I'm willing to profile -- also known as seeing reality as it is, not as fashions dictate it must be. And this brings us to what is most shocking.
Why was an obvious jihadist in our military in the first place, let alone promoted to major?
Well, the question has already been answered. We have become a sick society, where fantasies are favored and reality is called "racist." If there were an officer of Japanese descent in our military during WWII, he wouldn't have lasted til the next day's rising sun if he had expressed pro-Imperial Japanese sentiments. But that was then, when America was America, before she was sacrificed on the altar of the leftist dystopia in utopian clothing.
